On Monday, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda signed into law harsh, anti-gay legislation. The law includes provisions that would jail repeat offenders for life, outlaw any promotion of homosexuality, and require the Ugandan people to denounce it. In the face of genuine persecution of gay people, of course, the LGBT community and their supporters are conspicuously silent. And while the Obama administration has released a statement criticizing the law, most black activists remain completely MIA as well, including the man leading the charge against the anti-gay marriage agenda in America, Eric Holder.

This largely non-reaction to the far more serious developments in Uganda stands in stark contrast to the efforts by both entities on the home front. Holder, who wholeheartedly embraces the selective law enforcement agenda that has become the trademark of the Obama administration, has extended that agenda to the gay marriage debate. Speaking to the National Association of Attorneys General on Tuesday, Holder advised his state counterparts that they needn’t defend the laws of their states they consider discriminatory.

Holder cited his own experience with the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as the template state attorneys general should apparently follow. ”Any decisions — at any level — not to defend individual laws must be exceedingly rare,” Holder said at the meeting. “And they must never stem merely from policy or political disagreements–hinging instead on firm constitutional grounds.” He then added that his own view is that “we must be suspicious of legal classifications based solely on sexual orientation.”

One is left to wonder how those constitutional grounds are determined if a state attorney general can simply refuse to defend a challenge to any law they themselves deem to be discriminatory before a trial takes place. Moreover it is hard to see how the refusal to defend the rule of law would be anything but a political act.

Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange of the Republican Attorneys General Association eviscerated this dangerous nonsense. ”A state attorney general has a solemn duty to the state and its people to defend state laws and constitutional provisions against challenge under federal law. To refuse to do so because of personal policy preferences or political pressure erodes the rule of law on which all of our freedoms are founded. A government that does not enforce the law equally will lead our society to disrespect the rule of law,” he said in a statement.

Political pressure is a specialty of the LGBT community whose most recent focus has been a religious protection law proposed by the state of Arizona, which was recently vetoed by Gov. Jan Brewer in light of an enormous public outcry. The purpose of pointing out what happened in Arizona is not to evaluate the pros or cons of Brewer’s recent veto. It is to demonstrate the enormous power of a mobilized LGBT community that apparently feels no similar compulsion to mobilize against Museveni in Uganda. Even as they remained focused on Arizona, the Red Paper, a Ugandan tabloid, published a list of 200 people it accused of being gay under the headline “Exposed!” ”Uganda’s 200 top homos named,” the paper declared. “In salutation to the new law, today we unleash Uganda’s top homos and their sympathisers,” it added, compiling a list of those who had declared their sexuality and those who hadn’t. The list included activists, priests and music stars.

Frank Mugisha, director of the group Sexual Minorities Uganda, illuminated the implications of the new law. ”We’re going to see people getting beaten on the streets, we’re going to see people thrown out by their families, we’re going to see people being evicted by their landlords, we’re going to see people losing jobs, we’re going to see people thrown out of school, because they are perceived or not as homosexuals,” he warned. “Even the suspicion will get someone in trouble.”

It is trouble welcomed by Uganda’s Muslim leaders. “It takes a courageous leader to defy all the western powers who have gone as far a threatening to cut off aid to Uganda in case the president signs the anti-gay bill,” said Hajji Nsereko Mutumba, the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council (UMSC) Public Relations Officer, in a statement.

Perhaps it takes no courage at all, either for Museveni or the LGBT community and Eric Holder. Forbes Magazine contributor Cedric Mohammed explains that geo-political concerns take precedence over human rights issues. “Despite the strong rhetoric coming from the Obama administration over the signing of an anti-Homosexual law by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, there is no way President Obama will allow the issue to compromise long-standing American military interests in the region and there’s little chance the LGBT political establishment will ask him to….Militarization trumps everything else as evidenced by the influential LGBT-rights group, The Human Rights Commission’s lack of lobbying on the issue,” he writes.

No doubt that decision is made easier by the left’s general contempt for Christian values and Western civilization. Yet the outpouring of vituperation against the “cartoonish” bigotry or “vile” exclusivity of Christians opposed to endorsing the gay agenda stands in odious contrast to the LGBT calculated silence surrounding Uganda’s unquestionably reprehensible — and possibly deadly — treatment of homosexuals. That hypocrisy goes double for Eric Holder, whose sense of outrage for any injustice directed at homosexuals and people of color apparently fails to extend itself beyond the borders of the United States.

Thus, barring a sudden change of heart, the genuine persecution of gays in Uganda will not be impeded by the self-professed champions of tolerance and human rights. In short, if the LGBT community and Eric Holder didn’t have double-standards, they’d have no standards at all.

Logged

"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

"Political pressure is a specialty of the LGBT community whose most recent focus has been a religious protection law proposed by the state of Arizona, which was recently vetoed by Gov. Jan Brewer in light of an enormous public outcry. The purpose of pointing out what happened in Arizona is not to evaluate the pros or cons of Brewer’s recent veto. It is to demonstrate the enormous power of a mobilized LGBT community that apparently feels no similar compulsion to mobilize against Museveni in Uganda."

Exactly so. Pair this with the Jonah Goldberg piece I just posted in the rants thread.

I think our side needs to come up with a pithy statement that reaches the majority of the people and is able to stand up to the "collective militant enthusiasm" (the term comes from Konrad Lorenz and has meaning) of liberal fascism.

Coincidentally enough, I think I have one. LOL

"You are free to do what you like, I am free to make of it what I will-- and vice versa."

Or, more-longwindedly:

"As long as people are free to do and be responsible for whatever they like. Equally, others are free to make of it what they will."

"The free to make of it what your will" gives a way for those who self-identify as "tolerant" (seeing this as being offered by the other side at present they are on the other side) to self-identify as tolerant on our side (we tolerate both sides). Whereas as those who do discern/judge can find room within our tent as well.

I don't usually post here, but I know theres a variety of opinions and viewpoints here that I respect.

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Earlier this month, Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed into law the Mississippi Religious Freedom Restoration Act that lets Christians — or anyone of any faith — off the hook. As of July 1, they will be able to say, “We don’t serve gay people here,” and the subject of their anti-gay hate will have zero legal recourse except to turn around and walk away. They can’t sue, because the person of faith is merely exercising their right to practice their faith as they see fit.

Okay, its a law now. Fine and dandy. Now you can turn someone away from a public business/discriminate according to your beliefs.

So in responce to this, we see some business do this:

Awesome. Great. Good marketing point also.

Then we hear this:

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Buddy Smith, American Family Association’s executive vice president, told the AFA that customers who do business with stores that have the stickers in their windows “are agreeing with these businesses that Christians no longer have the freedom to live out the dictates of their Christian faith and conscience.”

“It’s not really a buying campaign, but it’s a bully campaign,” he added, “it’s being carried out by radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture.

“They don’t want to hear that homosexuality is sinful behavior – and they wish to silence Christians and the church who dare to believe this truth.”

Annnnndddd reality has left the building. How, in any certain terms , does this constitue bullying when the other thing is backed by the force of LAW!!!??? How is this bullying when all it says is, "those guys over there won't serve you, but we will."

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are agreeing with these businesses that Christians no longer have the freedom to live out the dictates of their Christian faith and conscience.”

Patently false. You still have the freedom live your life and run your business according to your faith...what you can't do is force another business to NOT serve someone because of your faith. Or impose your faith on others to the detriment of their business.Or is part of Christianty to force your beliefs on everyone around you? Is there some Shiara type law system in the New Testament I managed to miss?

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“it’s being carried out by radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture.

By what, not letting you dictate who someone else can and can not serve at their establishment?!

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and they wish to silence Christians and the church who dare to believe this truth.

How exactly? By putting up stickers saying they will serve people you won't. Are they putting them over your mouth or something?

Its like these people are saying "We don't want your business....but we don't want you going anywhere else to do business either."

If thats not some form of bullying and non-sense I don't know what is.

One of the best examples of double-think, martyrdom and victimhood I have seen. Not only are they now allowed to discriminate...by law...but they somehow see other people continuing to do business as usual as somehow an attack on them?

Wow...just wow. Drowning in the absurdity.

(FYI,. I don't think anyone should have to serve anyone they don't want to[exception being basic utilities and necesseties, IMO]. Its a free market. That should be the law.

I can't wait for a Muslim to refuse service to a Jew or Christian at some point and see how that works out.....)

ccp: "Hillary is about to continue the trend with this men vs women thing.

Did you see the article about Pepsi's CEO lamenting how women cannot still "have it all". As though choosing between motherhood, wifehood, and a career is a tragedy, or a conscious effort to suppress women.

Don't men have to choose between a career, fatherhood, and husbanhood?

I have cousins, the wife works a professional career and the husband stays home and is a Dad and husband. The kids seem wonderful and as far as I know happy.

So Ms CEO of Pepsi:

I congratulate you on your truly astonishing accomplishments. But I don't feel sorry for you. You have no gripe."------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My Dad's biggest regret on his death bed was that he could not spend more time with us growing up (because he had to work so much). Women who choose career and daycare to raise their children might feel some of that regret too. I was with my daughter almost everyday growing up with no regret but have big regret for the neglect that put on my career.

The number of hours in the day to do everything we wish we could do is a limiting factor that affects everyone equally. Make your choices and quit griping. Better yet with free speech, gripe all you want but we don't want to hear it.

I'm sure the women in the muslim world with masses of scar tissue where their genitals used to be would be very sad to read about the difficulties faced by middle and upper class women of the first world. Luckily, most aren't allowed to learn to read, thus sparing them the discomfort of learning how tough life can be for a female CEO.

Mormon leaders tried to stake out a middle ground in the escalating battle between gay rights and religious freedom on Tuesday, demanding that both ideas, together, be treated as a national priority.

At a rare news conference at church headquarters in Salt Lake City, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints forcefully condemned discrimination against gays and vowed to support nondiscrimination laws — like one proposed in Utah — to protect people from being denied jobs or housing because of their sexual orientation.

But they also called for these same laws, or others, to protect the rights of people who say their beliefs compel them to oppose homosexuality or to refuse service to gay couples. They cited examples of religious opponents of same-sex marriage who have been sanctioned or sued or have lost their jobs.

“Such tactics are every bit as wrong as denying access to employment, housing or public services because of race or gender,” said Elder Dallin H. Oaks, a member of a group of church leaders known as the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. “It is one of today’s great ironies that some people who have fought so hard for L.G.B.T. rights now try to deny the rights of others to disagree with their public policy proposals.”

The church’s announcement, an attempt to placate all sides of a divisive issue, astonished some lawmakers in the halls of Utah’s Capitol, who called it a watershed moment that could reconfigure the debate over gay rights in their socially conservative state. With the church now backing nondiscrimination laws, a bill offering such protections to those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender now appears more likely to pass after years of being stalled in the Legislature.

The church had already supported such legislation in Salt Lake City and other local Utah jurisdictions, but had held off endorsing it statewide.

“This was a major event for the Mormon Church, a major event for Utah and the L.G.B.T. community,” said State Senator Stephen H. Urquhart, a Republican who has tried unsuccessfully to pass an anti-discrimination law. “This changes the dynamic.”

The Mormon leaders at the news conference, three of the church’s male apostles and one woman, made it clear that their church does not intend to change its doctrine, which says that marriage can be only between a man and a woman, and that gay sexual relationships are prohibited.

This doctrine “comes from sacred Scripture, and we are not at liberty to change it,” said Sister Neill Marriott, a leader in church women’s organizations.

The church is now trying to position itself as a champion of both gay rights and the conservative religious opposition to gay rights. But the approach announced on Tuesday by Mormon leaders is unlikely to do much to help calm this front in the culture wars. Gay rights advocates have long maintained that denying service to gays on the basis of religious belief is no different from the discrimination against blacks that was outlawed during the civil rights movement.Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story

The Human Rights Campaign, a leading gay rights organization, said the Mormon leaders’ endorsement of nondiscrimination laws may be “deeply meaningful” to gay Mormons and their families, but is “deeply flawed” as a matter of public policy.

“Doctors would still be allowed to deny medical care. Pharmacists would still be allowed to refuse to fill valid prescriptions. And landlords, as well as business operators, would still be allowed to reject L.G.B.T. people. All in the name of religion,” the Human Rights Campaign said in a statement.

Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s ethics and religious liberty commission, called the move “well intentioned but naïve.” Proposals to address discrimination against gay people in employment or housing “inevitably lead to targeted assaults on religious liberty,” he said.

Mormon leaders have in recent years joined Roman Catholic bishops, Southern Baptist pastors and other conservative evangelicals in what they have framed as a “religious liberty” campaign to defend their freedom of conscience.

But Tuesday’s announcement again shows that the Mormon Church has been trying to change its tone on homosexuality since 2008, when it faced widespread condemnation for mobilizing members and raising money to help pass Proposition 8 in California, which outlawed same-sex marriage.

In 2009, the church threw its support behind a local law in Salt Lake City protecting gay and transgender people from job and housing discrimination. But it remained largely silent on efforts to pass statewide anti-discrimination laws.

With the Legislature back in session, Mr. Urquhart is again trying pass a law that would ban housing and employment discrimination based on someone’s sexuality or gender identity.

“I think the bill, now, will pass,” he said.

But conservative lawmakers were still skeptical. Representative Jacob Anderegg, a Republican from Lehi, Utah, said the church’s change in position cleared some “potential stumbling blocks,” but he said he still had fundamental concerns.

“I can’t say definitively right now that I’m on board,” he said. “The devil’s in the details.”

U.S. Supreme Court Won’t Stop Same-Sex Marriages in Alabama The United States Supreme Court said early Monday that it would not stop same-sex marriages in Alabama, as gay couples gathered outside courthouses across the state.Justices on Monday morning denied a request by the Alabama attorney general to extend a hold on a judge’s ruling overturning the state’s ban on gay marriage. The attorney general, Luther Strange, had asked the Supreme Court to halt the weddings until the justices settle the issue nationwide when they take it up this year.Judge Callie V. S. Granade of Federal District Court ruled in January that the Alabama ban was unconstitutional, but she put a hold on her order until Monday to give the state time to appeal. Gay couples are lining up at courthouses seeking marriage licenses.But in a dramatic show of defiance toward the federal judiciary, Chief Justice Roy S. Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court on Sunday night ordered the state’s probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to gay couples on Monday.According to reports early Monday, probate judges in Birmingham and Montgomery had defied Chief Justice Moore and were issuing licenses.READ MORE »http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/10/us/alabama-supreme-court-same-sex-marriages.html?emc=edit_na_20150209

“To be clear, it is possible for a person who has given birth to a child to identify as male,” said Susan Sommer, a lawyer for Lambda Legal, an advocacy group for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people. "Given various transgender stages, there is room for the person who gives birth to check the male box."

“What is your DATE OF BIRTH, current AGE and SEX?” the form asks in the section clearly marked “Mother/Parent (Woman Giving Birth).”

""It's all about love", it says in our local paper. No. Love was already legal. It's all about benefits."

I suspect that is why many get married literally the day it becomes legal. Start the process to get the checks or write the deductions. Not about "LUV".

Nothing wrong with that as everyone else would do the same thing.

I still think it not a good idea for the State to sanction gay marriage. And I have larger problem with male gays using surrogates to have children or female gays using sperm donors to have children, or gay adoptions unless in extenuating circumstances.

And I very strongly suspect MOST people agree with me. I don't believe the veracity of polls that purportedly show a MAJORITY of Americans think gay marriage or adoption or having children is ok. I just don't believe it. I think it is the herd mentality and fear of being crucified as insensitive or a homophobe that makes people cover up their true feelings.

""It's all about love", it says in our local paper. No. Love was already legal. It's all about benefits."

I suspect that is why many get married literally the day it becomes legal. Start the process to get the checks or write the deductions. Not about "LUV".

Nothing wrong with that as everyone else would do the same thing.

I still think it not a good idea for the State to sanction gay marriage. And I have larger problem with male gays using surrogates to have children or female gays using sperm donors to have children, or gay adoptions unless in extenuating circumstances.

And I very strongly suspect MOST people agree with me. I don't believe the veracity of polls that purportedly show a MAJORITY of Americans think gay marriage or adoption or having children is ok. I just don't believe it. I think it is the herd mentality and fear of being crucified as insensitive or a homophobe that makes people cover up their true feelings.

There is so much in there. We jumped from private love to public benefits to removing the words mother and father (as the US govt did in FAFSA years ago) and replacing them with "Parent 1" and "Parent 2" (with room for more), also offensive to gays - who wants to be Parent 2?

There are gender differences with gays too. Male gays don't bond for life at the same frequency as females. Who knew?! Heteros screwed up the bond for life argument all on their own.

Is it still legal to "discriminate" in adoption placement? Does a kid have the chance statistically with a single mom, with a lesbian couple, with 2 gay men, with 2 reverse gender trans-sexuals, with some other future combination that I won't make facetiously but is imaginable?

Don't kids have the best chance to succeed in American when they grow up with one mother, one father, in love, married, and under one roof?

The idea that one’s sex is a feeling, not a fact, has permeated our culture and is leaving casualties in its wake. Gender dysphoria should be treated with psychotherapy, not surgery.

For forty years as the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School—twenty-six of which were also spent as Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital—I’ve been studying people who claim to be transgender. Over that time, I’ve watched the phenomenon change and expand in remarkable ways.

A rare issue of a few men—both homosexual and heterosexual men, including some who sought sex-change surgery because they were erotically aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women—has spread to include women as well as men. Even young boys and girls have begun to present themselves as of the opposite sex. Over the last ten or fifteen years, this phenomenon has increased in prevalence, seemingly exponentially. Now, almost everyone has heard of or met such a person.

Publicity, especially from early examples such as “Christine” Jorgenson, “Jan” Morris, and “Renee” Richards, has promoted the idea that one’s biological sex is a choice, leading to widespread cultural acceptance of the concept. And, that idea, quickly accepted in the 1980s, has since run through the American public like a revelation or “meme” affecting much of our thought about sex.

The champions of this meme, encouraged by their alliance with the broader LGBT movement, claim that whether you are a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, is more of a disposition or feeling about yourself than a fact of nature. And, much like any other feeling, it can change at any time, and for all sorts of reasons. Therefore, no one could predict who would swap this fact of their makeup, nor could one justifiably criticize such a decision.

At Johns Hopkins, after pioneering sex-change surgery, we demonstrated that the practice brought no important benefits. As a result, we stopped offering that form of treatment in the 1970s. Our efforts, though, had little influence on the emergence of this new idea about sex, or upon the expansion of the number of “transgendered” among young and old.

Olympic Athlete Turned "Pin-Up" Girl

This history may clarify some aspects of the latest high-profile transgender claimant. Bruce Jenner, the 1976 Olympic decathlon champion, is turning away from his titular identity as one of the “world’s greatest male athletes.” Jenner announced recently that he “identifies as a woman” and, with medical and surgical help, is busy reconstructing his physique.

I have not met or examined Jenner, but his behavior resembles that of some of the transgender males we have studied over the years. These men wanted to display themselves in sexy ways, wearing provocative female garb. More often than not, while claiming to be a woman in a man’s body, they declared themselves to be “lesbians” (attracted to other women). The photograph of the posed, corseted, breast-boosted Bruce Jenner (a man in his mid-sixties, but flaunting himself as if a “pin-up” girl in her twenties or thirties) on the cover of Vanity Fair suggests that he may fit the behavioral mold that Ray Blanchard has dubbed an expression of “autogynephilia”—from gynephilia (attracted to women) and auto (in the form of oneself).

The Emperor’s New Clothes

But the meme—that your sex is a feeling, not a biological fact, and can change at any time—marches on through our society. In a way, it’s reminiscent of the Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. In that tale, the Emperor, believing that he wore an outfit of special beauty imperceptible to the rude or uncultured, paraded naked through his town to the huzzahs of courtiers and citizens anxious about their reputations. Many onlookers to the contemporary transgender parade, knowing that a disfavored opinion is worse than bad taste today, similarly fear to identify it as a misapprehension.FILE - In this June 19, 2014, file photo, Laverne Cox arrives at the Critics' Choice Television Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Thursday, June 19, 2014, in Beverly Hills, Calif. President Barack Obama during his first year in office became the first chief executive to say "transgender" in a speech, the first to name transgender political appointees and the first to prohibit job bias against transgender government workers. He also signed hate crime legislation that represented the first federal civil rights protections for transgender people in U.S. history. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

I am ever trying to be the boy among the bystanders who points to what’s real. I do so not only because truth matters, but also because overlooked amid the hoopla—enhanced now by Bruce Jenner’s celebrity and Annie Leibovitz’s photography—stand many victims. Think, for example, of the parents whom no one—not doctors, schools, nor even churches—will help to rescue their children from these strange notions of being transgendered and the problematic lives these notions herald. These youngsters now far outnumber the Bruce Jenner type of transgender. Although they may be encouraged by his public reception, these children generally come to their ideas about their sex not through erotic interests but through a variety of youthful psychosocial conflicts and concerns.

First, though, let us address the basic assumption of the contemporary parade: the idea that exchange of one’s sex is possible. It, like the storied Emperor, is starkly, nakedly false. Transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men. All (including Bruce Jenner) become feminized men or masculinized women, counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they “identify.” In that lies their problematic future.

When “the tumult and shouting dies,” it proves not easy nor wise to live in a counterfeit sexual garb. The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people—extending over thirty years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgendered—documents their lifelong mental unrest. Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to twenty times that of comparable peers.

How to Treat Gender Dysphoria

So how should we make sense of this matter today? As with any mental phenomenon, what’s crucial is noting its fundamental characteristic and then identifying the many ways in which that characteristic can manifest itself.

The central issue with all transgender subjects is one of assumption—the assumption that one’s sexual nature is misaligned with one’s biological sex. This problematic assumption comes about in several different ways, and these distinctions in its generation determine how to manage and treat it.

Based on the photographic evidence one might guess Bruce Jenner falls into the group of men who come to their disordered assumption through being sexually aroused by the image of themselves as women. He could have been treated for this misaligned arousal with psychotherapy and medication. Instead, he found his way to surgeons who worked him over as he wished. Others have already commented on his stereotypic caricature of women as decorative “babes” (“I look forward to wearing nail polish until it chips off,” he said to Diane Sawyer)—a view that understandably infuriates feminists—and his odd sense that only feelings, not facts, matter here.

For his sake, however, I do hope that he receives regular, attentive follow-up care, as his psychological serenity in the future is doubtful. Future men with similar feelings and intentions should be treated for those feelings rather than being encouraged to undergo bodily changes. Group therapies are now available for them.

Most young boys and girls who come seeking sex-reassignment are utterly different from Jenner. They have no erotic interest driving their quest. Rather, they come with psychosocial issues—conflicts over the prospects, expectations, and roles that they sense are attached to their given sex—and presume that sex-reassignment will ease or resolve them.

The grim fact is that most of these youngsters do not find therapists willing to assess and guide them in ways that permit them to work out their conflicts and correct their assumptions. Rather, they and their families find only “gender counselors” who encourage them in their sexual misassumptions.

Those with Gender Dysphoria Need Evidence-Based Care

There are several reasons for this absence of coherence in our mental health system. Important among them is the fact that both the state and federal governments are actively seeking to block any treatments that can be construed as challenging the assumptions and choices of transgendered youngsters. “As part of our dedication to protecting America’s youth, this administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors,” said Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to President Obama.

In two states, a doctor who would look into the psychological history of a transgendered boy or girl in search of a resolvable conflict could lose his or her license to practice medicine. By contrast, such a physician would not be penalized if he or she started such a patient on hormones that would block puberty and might stunt growth.

What is needed now is public clamor for coherent science—biological and therapeutic science—examining the real effects of these efforts to “support” transgendering. Although much is made of a rare “intersex” individual, no evidence supports the claim that people such as Bruce Jenner have a biological source for their transgender assumptions. Plenty of evidence demonstrates that with him and most others, transgendering is a psychological rather than a biological matter.

In fact, gender dysphoria—the official psychiatric term for feeling oneself to be of the opposite sex—belongs in the family of similarly disordered assumptions about the body, such as anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder. Its treatment should not be directed at the body as with surgery and hormones any more than one treats obesity-fearing anorexic patients with liposuction. The treatment should strive to correct the false, problematic nature of the assumption and to resolve the psychosocial conflicts provoking it. With youngsters, this is best done in family therapy.

The larger issue is the meme itself. The idea that one’s sex is fluid and a matter open to choice runs unquestioned through our culture and is reflected everywhere in the media, the theater, the classroom, and in many medical clinics. It has taken on cult-like features: its own special lingo, internet chat rooms providing slick answers to new recruits, and clubs for easy access to dresses and styles supporting the sex change. It is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges.

But gird your loins if you would confront this matter. Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle.

Paul McHugh, MD, is University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is the author of “The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry.”